It seems that there may as of yet be hope for the Swedish people. According to this DN article, the Swedish people seem to be aware of the overpricing and DRM restrictions on music that is available for purchase online.
It feels good to know that people are not as oblivious to these issues as I always assumed.
Sometimes it feels like no one can be bothered to explain things anymore. A common answer to questions on forums and in discussions over instant-messaging is to google it.
Sure enough, most answers can be found on google. And most of the time the search and subsequent intake of information will take less time then actually typing up an explanation.
So are we losing a form of communication or will this create a whole new level of discussion where, like Vulcans we will focus on the subject at hand, rather then the explanation of concepts that should already be familiar to participants? Perhaps a balance will be struck between the two sides?
I can’t wait to see the outcome.
It seems that the Swedish police is censoring the Internets as we know it.
Everyone knows that companies and governments use censorship software to block employees from accessing certain websites, but today I was pointed to a site which appears to be blocked by Swedish police on at least three of Sweden’s four largest ISPs: Comhem, Tele2 and Bredbandsbolaget.
The blockage is due to the alleged child-porn contents of the website so I am guessing the site itself is NSFW. The URL suggests that it might be a hentai site, which is in the western world synonymous with manga-style hardcore porn, i.e. pornographic drawings. I have not been able to confirm the true nature of the site, since I am unable to go there due to the blockage.
However, I feel that the motives behind the block are irrelevant. The fact that the site seems to be censored by the Police at the ISP level is very disturbing. The site has not been taken down, it’s simply not accessible from at least two large ISPs in Sweden due to government interference.
I was actually able to browse parts of the site using google’s cache service, but all the images were still blocked.
I would like to take this opportunity to point out that accessing the contents of this particular site is not my goal, nor am I challenging the criminal nature of child pornography. I feel very strongly about putting every last abuser (sexual, or otherwise) of children behind some very thick bars. However, if one type of content is censored at a national level, what’s next? And should one government organisation, really be given that kind of power?
I suppose I might be overreacting, but whenever I browse the internet and see government or police logos where there should be none, I get scared, tired and frustrated. Scars of growing up in the USSR, no doubt. Here’s to a free world.
Am I naïve to assume that internet should be completely free? Am I wrong to think that censoring criminal activity is bad? Argh! My head hurts from all this.
Update: Nisse made a good point: since it’s illegal to view/posess child pornography, one could go to jail if one was to view the site in question… Food for thought.
Another update: Slashdot talks about similar blocks in Finland
Technorati Tags: censorship, censur, great firewall, police, polis, sweden
Creative Commons is something I strongly believe in, because I believe that innovation and imagination are in fact simply reinnovation and reimagination. Nothing we do is new, everything always draws upon existing stories and ideas.
Will locking away ideas, knowledge and stories behind a wall of legal protection for one hundred years cause the loss of many great works and perhaps most importantly instigate the stagnation and decay of creativity as we know it?
If the Bible had been written by King Leonidas and the rest of the Spartans from 300, it would probably read pretty much the same as it does now.
It turns out, the Bible is already chock full of ass kicking. Here are the verses that make us want to take to the streets and put some unbelievers to the sword.
After some messing around with attempted backups and hard-drive replacements, I discovered that at least if the OS is Leopard 10.5.1, I could boot my PowerBook G4 1.25Ghz using a Leopard install on a USB2 external drive. Everyone seems to think this is not possible, perhaps Leopard is a nicer boot person?
This little “enhancement” helped me avoid having to unscrew my PowerBook a second time since I was not smart enough to make sure it worked before sealing it up after putting in a new drive into it 
I basically connected a USB2 drive to my Powerbook, ran a backup onto it using SuperDuper[!?;)] and then replaced the internal drive with the contents of the cannibalized external casing. To my dismay the procedure was not successful and I was unable to boot. Apparently this was in part due to SuperDuper not being compatible with Leopard.
I did however verify that the drive worked, by booting the install DVD and seeing that the drive was in fact there.
Lucky for me I was in an experimental mood and tried putting in my original drive into the external casing and booting up with it. To my astonishment, the procedure worked and as we speak I am doing a Disk Utility restore from my external USB2 drive that used to be my internal drive onto my internal drive, that used to be the external drive.
Screenshots: (note the mount point and bus speed)
Police around the world are careless with their use of non-lethal weapons. It seems that rather then attempting to subdue a suspect they seem to simply taser them and then have to subdue a thrashing panicking person instead.Is it laziness or cruelty?
In this clip you can clearly see that the dude was not threatening the police in any way, aside from throwing furniture. I guess that an old chair and crappy dell is worth more then a dude’s life these days. In this article, the man in question was in a diabetic coma. That’s even more wrong on so many levels.
Some might say that in this day and age, being able to restrain potential suicide bombers quickly is a good thing. However, if you taser someone with their finger on a big red detonator button, you can be damn sure that the button is going to be pushed.
Perhaps the police should ease up on the doughnuts and go back to the gym and dojo.
When I was in Japan, sometimes I was annoyed at the high level of politeness in some instances. One such instance is the trains.
On almost all trains the number of announcements is extremely high. After every stop they welcome all the new passengers and thank them for riding the this and that train, and before each stop they thank the departing passengers. From time to time they remind you to turn off your phone and to allow old people to sit on priority seats…
Now I’m sitting here on a Swedish express train and the first peep out of the speakers is the rather casual and curt announcement of the next station. I felt almost insulted upon hearing that. I guess I must have gotten more used to the Japanese way then I thought, the absence of talking makes the ride seem so much more drab and cheap… Weird.
Have I lost my ability to enjoy the silence?
PS: It also smells like rotten fruit here. Note to Swedish train operators: Don’t place garbage bags next to every seat, place them at the exits!
So the time has come to return to ye olde homecountry.
I’ve spent a good 25 days in Japan now, my longest stay yet. Right about now the idea that this will be my last night in Tokyo slowly sinks in. This is also when the nostalgia kicks in and I feel that I’ll miss this place terribly.
I’ll miss narrow streets, conbinis, vending machines (although my teeth wont miss them!), passnet, cheap good food, trains that come often, izakayas etc… I wont miss the bikes on the sidewalk and trains that stop going at midnight. Nor will I miss the bugs, cockroaches and creepy dying things falling out of trees (sometimes landing way too close for comfort, or in the case of Nisse: on you). I think I’ll miss the bugs least of all! hehe
This trip has been rockier then the last two. There have been days here when I would have killed to be home in Sweden. I think it might have been the heat. I have handled it much worse then I expected. Next time I’ll come during colder times. I’ve also been annoyed at some aspects of Japanese society like the drone culture and male domination which has at times caused what I might call “annoyance attacks”. The annoyance attacks are very annoying.
Sometimes when I am in Stockholm I have days when I’d kill to be in Japan or New York or something, and when I am in Japan I have days when I want to return home. So the end result is that I look forward to coming home, but still some kind reflex nags in the back of my head and begs to stay longer.
Life in Stockholm seems much simpler. Except maybe when it comes to finding good and cheap places to eat. Something about Japan makes me tired at times, maybe it’s the need to constantly process Japanese or the large crowds or perhaps even the long distances between places, hard to tell.
The idea that Karin will not be home when I get back is also making this harder. Quite a bit harder in fact. At least the Vlad will meet me at the airport, hehe.
They say the grass is always greener on the other side and for me this is so true that it sometimes makes my life a total bitch.
I’ve uploaded some photos to make my nostalgia even worse. Head over to here and see.
Lazy Zealots angelhill.net/code
